It’s culinary madness in the SoraKitchen!

It’s been about about a month since Nissin Cup Noodle released their special Tokujo series of flavors, which takes existing cup noodle flavors and levels them up with deluxe ingredients and soups that we found, for the most part, to be worth the extra 23 yen (US$0.15) per cup.

But we also remember last year’s unique “Super Combination Cup Noodle” flavors, in which two of Nissin’s most popular flavors were combined into one cup. Those flavors were pretty good too, which got us thinking…What if we combined all four of the premium Tokujo flavors into one?

If the original combination cups were “Super Combination”, then combining all four of the extra premium Tokujo flavors would be a “Hyper Gorgeous Combination,” don’t you think? Well, naturally we had to test it out.

If you haven’t yet heard about the Tokujo Cup Noodle series, they are leveled-up versions of four of their most popular flavors: Soy Sauce with Truffle Oil, Curry, Seafood, and Chili Tomato. You might have seen them sparkling like gods in their golden packaging on your local convenience store’s shelf.

We know from experience that they’re all really good, so surely they’d be delicious combined…Right? We were full of expectations.

Cooking them was easy. Like other Cup Noodle brands, you simply pour hot water into the cup, wait three minutes, and then eat. Well, in our case, we would dump it into a bowl to be mixed. First we opened each product…

…poured hot water in them…

…then closed their lids, and waited three minutes.

We then poured the seasoning oil and spices into each one…

…and the four flavors were ready to be mixed.

Of course, we had to remind ourselves what each one tasted like, so we decided to taste the individual flavors before we mixed them together. We started with the Curry flavor…

…then the Seafood.

Next, the Chili Tomato…

…and finally, the Soy Sauce with Truffle Oil. They were all as good and satisfying as we remembered.

Now that we had refamiliarized ourselves with the flavor of each one, it was time to make the Super Gorgeous Combination Cup Noodle.

▼ Geronimo!

With all four mixed in, it took all our might to combine them…

…but we did it!

The result appeared to be fitting of the title Hyper Gorgeous Combination Noodle. I mean, it was huge, and the mix of colors was exciting. It cost us 1,000 yen to put together, so it was probably the most luxurious Cup Noodle in history.

We were so excited to eat it! With our hearts pumping in our chests, we lifted a scoop of saucy noodles to our lips.

The first flavor to hit our tongues was the Curry flavor, which was chased by the Chili Tomato. We couldn’t get a sense of the Soy Sauce or Seafood flavors at all. In fact, if we were to describe our first impression of the Hyper Gorgeous Combination Noodle, we would have to say that it was not hyper or gorgeous at all.

Was our mixing technique at fault? This was clearly inferior to the individual products. Just in case, we put extra effort into mixing it a second time and gave it another taste.

Nope, still not good.

Combining the four different soups seemed to create a traffic jam of flavors, and the thickness of it didn’t help. Nevertheless, we continued diligently eating it.

Maybe it was because the congestion of flavors gradually decreased, but as we ate more and more, we started to get more of the previously hidden Soy Sauce and Seafood flavors. And since the toppings were also specially made as part of the Tokujo series, their flavors also gradually came to the forefront. By the time we’d eaten just about everything, the four flavors had finally, properly combined.

Unfortunately, it still wasn’t very good.

That means that instead of giving already levelled-up products an even greater upgrade, we ended up downgrading them. However, that taught us a valuable lesson. Recklessly combining good flavors does not necessarily mean they will become even more delicious.

Perhaps we should have taken Cup Noodle’s Super Combination series as an example and just combined two of the flavors. For example, we could have replicated their Seapoodle flavor, which combines the Seafood flavor with the original Soy Sauce flavor. Doing so with the Tokujo flavors could’ve resulted in a Hyper Gorgeous Seapoodle version. Or perhaps there is a good ratio for combining flavors, like seven parts curry flavor to three parts soy sauce.

Alas, this experiment was a swing and a miss. But worry not! This just means there are plenty of ways to explore the new Tokujo series even more.

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